For All Time

194.66.232.91 - - [01/Jul/2019:07:54:49 +0100] "GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0" 200 47 "-" "bl.uk_lddc_bot/3.3.0-LBS-2016-02 (+http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/websites/websites/faqswebmaster/index.html)"
194.66.232.91 - - [01/Jul/2019:07:55:02 +0100] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 1851 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/538.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) PhantomJS/2.1.1 Safari/538.1 bl.uk_lddc_renderbot/2.0.0 (+ http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/websites/websites/faqswebmaster/index.html)"
194.66.232.91 - - [01/Jul/2019:07:55:11 +0100] "GET /assets/main.css HTTP/1.1" 200 9924 "https://www.chrisrcook.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/538.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) PhantomJS/2.1.1 Safari/538.1 bl.uk_lddc_renderbot/2.0.0 (+ http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/websites/websites/faqswebmaster/index.html)"
194.66.232.91 - - [01/Jul/2019:07:55:11 +0100] "GET /resources/images/home.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 382760 "https://www.chrisrcook.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Unknown; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/538.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) PhantomJS/2.1.1 Safari/538.1 bl.uk_lddc_renderbot/2.0.0 (+ http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/legaldeposit/websites/websites/faqswebmaster/index.html)"

This is kinda cool – this site seems to have made it as far as the UK Web Archive’s crawlers! Apparently I will now taint the web long after I’m gone.

There are also a couple of snapshots on Archive.org but they only exist because I was playing with their Wayback Machine website – alas, I have not yet to made it far enough up the list for them to visit of their own accord.

The Old Ways

“In early versions of the Mouse program, you could enter the call sign of the AP bureau to which you wanted to connect.”

This is a funky little tale of a cub reporter and his TRS-80 back in the early days of computerised journalism.

16 Years Later: An (almost) review of ’28 Days Later’

Sorting through an old box of crap, I accidentally came across my ancient DVD of ‘28 Days Later’.

Ever-happy to put aside something I should actually be doing and procrastinate, I popped it on and spent the next two hours (ish) rewatching a film I’d not seen since I first bought the DVD back in autumn 2003 – some 16 long years ago.

Continue reading “16 Years Later: An (almost) review of ’28 Days Later’”

DOOM

A trailer for the new DOOM dropped at E3 yesterday and I have to say that I’m rather looking forward to it. I’ve played DOOM – in it’s various incarnations – since the mid-late 90s and, in a world where stories seem to be ever more complex, the simplicity of DOOM is a refreshing change.

  • A portal to hell is opened.
  • Bad things come through.
  • Kill them all (and, preferably, do it to a rocking soundtrack).

It’s mindless escapism with black and white antagonists which, given my ever more limited gaming time, manages to strike a deeply appealing note to me.

Linkspam

Mac Open Web is an interesting little link for Apple users out there; it’s a curated web directory (remember those!) of open source and small developer software targeting the open/indie web with nothing from the big players and the major corporations.

I do hope that, as we push into the early 2020s, the slash-and-burn axis of facebook-twitter-reddit-google starts to weaken.

ISDN

I have now managed to screw my Amazon Advertising Profile up so much I now receive adverts for ISDN Splitters!

ISDN? ISDN was old when I took my first job (a worryingly long time ago). It was, along with some older vampire tapped BNC, one of the first things I tore out and replaced with a more civilised solution.

I mean, I could understand someone with some new old stock and a huge warehouse quietly listing it in the hope that someone might buy it and that they wouldn’t end up paying for recycling, but to actively advertise ISDN kit? That takes both commitment and an up front cash payment.

Madness!

Seti@Home

I’ve given in and installed Seti@Home again, this time dialled back to the point where it is — effectively — indistinguishable from my computers background cpu noise. The Intel GPU instance gave me terrible performance issues on my older MacBook Pro but that can be disabled via the website.

If we have another long hot summer I suspect that I’ll have to suspend running it until temperatures return to normal.

A Burning Sensation

It’s been so long that since I’ve had to burn real, physical media that I’ve completely forgotten how to do it – especially on MacOS.

Anyway, it turns out all you have to do is right click on the iso and select burn.

And, just like that, I’m now an owner of a Kubuntu 19.04 install CD.

In other good news, it appears that my external blu ray reader/writer still works!

Link Rot

The internet of my youth continues to bitrot into nothingness. This time it’s the (presumed) death of lspace.org – a site that was once the premier Discworld location on the web. I must have spent hours working through the annotated Pratchett files when I should have been studying for my GCSEs.

Now all it returns is…

DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

It’s hardly an auspicious end.